


stop, scream, spin, start

by ShippingEverything



Series: join in our crusade [1]
Category: Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Marvel Avengers Fusion, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier AU, Ernst is Cap and Hanschen is Bucky and I'm trash, Hanschen And Thea Are Siblings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 08:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6604588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShippingEverything/pseuds/ShippingEverything
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ernst didn't expect to find Hanschen on a bridge in DC, but then again Ernst didn't expect he'd still be alive in 2015, either. </p><p>Or: the Captain America AU I've been screaming about in twitter</p>
            </blockquote>





	stop, scream, spin, start

**Author's Note:**

> i diddly done fucked up the timeline and I skimmed over a bunch of stuff bc I wanted to write this but also I don't have the time to rewatch CA:WA/i didn't care about researching, so like enjoy and whatever.
> 
> WARNINGS!!!  
> I know for sure there's use of "crazy", some lowkey suicidal thoughts from Ernst, and mentions of torture and murder (Nothing explicit tho). Minor (really minor) internalized homophobia. I'm pretty sure there might be some casual ableism, but idk about anything else. If y'all see anything else you want tagged, tell me.

Ernst Robel--World War II vet, technical nonagenarian but literal 24 year old, Man Out Of His Time, and former government puppet--is tired. He didn't expect to see the sun ever again when he put that plane down in the arctic, and yet here he is in 2015 (And, _God_ , he'll never get over that, it's fucking _2015_ ), fighting some maniac with a metal arm on a bridge in Washington, D.C.

When he first "woke up", after the aliens ( _Aliens!!!_ ) in Manhattan shitshow, reporters always loved to ask "Hey, Cap! Did you ever imagine that the world would be like this?" and while it irritated the fuck out of him (Because what was he supposed to say? _Yes, of_ course _, I--a poor immigrant who should've died before he hit 20, either of disease or because he pissed off the wrong guy--imagined that there'd be a world where the buildings are a million stories tall and anyone can fly on a huge airplane and there'd be this thing called the Internet that connects everyone in the whole entire world_ ) he can say without a doubt that he would've _never_ imagined being AWOL from the government and fighting for his life against a legendary assassin that can somehow match him move for move.

 _What the actual fuck,_ Ernst thinks but doesn't say, because he had to get P.R. training when he was working for SHIELD before he, you know, leaped out of a moving elevator, and apparently one of the things that  people got told while he was under was that Captain America didn’t, under any circumstances, curse. Because it's not like Ernst is a real person that grew up in a bad part of town and got in fights all the time and worked on the docks with literal sailors and went to war or anyth-

Metal arm guy manages to get far enough from Ernst that he has the time and space to pull out his gun and shoot at Ernst twice and Ernst reminds rapidly himself that he has better stuff to be thinking of than his public image right now.

The guy is _good_ , not that Ernst is too shocked. Ilse had called him a ghost and, well, he lives up to the expectation. If Ernst wasn’t as enhanced as he is, he’d have a bullet through him or he’d have lost the guy, but Ernst is able to keep up with and keep out of the way of the masked murderer up until he knocks the guy’s face mask off and-

“Hanschen?”

The man stop and blinks, squinting at Ernst like he’s really seeing him for the first time and he’s not quite sure where he knows Ernst from. It’s been 70 years and there is physically no way that this can be Hanschen, _Ernst’s_ Hanschen, but Ernst knows those lips and that nose and those blue, blue eyes, even when they’re as cold as they are right now, and-

Hanschen’s brows are pulled down the way they always used to be when he was trying to remember something. His scowl doesn’t lessen. His eyes are empty and unknowing.

“Who the hell is Hanschen?”

And, well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

 

* * *

(

 _Hans Rilow and Ernst Robel, inseparable from the schoolyard to the battlefield_ , is what the newsreels say. Thea--because Ernst has gone to visit her since he woke up and _god_ , she’s so _old_ now, nearly 85 years old, Ernst feels like _he’s_ the younger sibling--will say that Hanschen was her idiot older brother and the greatest hero that they’ve ever met ( _“And yes, that includes you, Ernst. You’re great but I don’t know if the kid who beat Billy Johnson bloody back when he was 90 pounds soaking wet can be called a_ hero _”_ ). Fanny Gabor, god rest her soul, always used to say that Hanschen was somehow both a scoundrel and a gentleman. Half the girls on their old street would’ve said that he was the best date in town. But who is Hans “Hanschen” Rilow _really_?

The SHIELD assigned therapist had asked Ernst that, weeks before this mess and Ernst had said “Hanschen was my best friend. We grew up together and he'd pulled me out of scraps. He always had my six-” before he’d been choked up by tears. Later, Ernst had laid in his too soft bed in his too big apartment in that too loud city and missed him with every aching beat of his heart, with every tug of his soul , with every breath and every blink and every twitch of muscle; Ernst missed Hanschen Rilow with every fiber of his being. Ernst had loved Hanschen, _still_ loved Hanschen because you don't get over those kind of feelings just because the other person dies right in front of you, and he was upset because Hanschen was the best guy Ernst had ever known and if _anyone_ deserved to survive the war, it was Hanschen.

Hanschen Rilow was once Ernst Robel’s very best friend, then he was a soldier because he got drafted into the War, and then he was a Prisoner Of War. He should’ve died but the universe--but _Ernst_ \--could not allow him to just _die_ when Ernst was _finally_ able to live, so he became a rescued troop and then a Howling Commando-- _Captain America’s own personal sniper_ , the reels would say, and Ernst and the boys would rib at Hanschen for hours about it. Hans Rilow was a good soldier, a better man; he was lost in combat, fell off a train and onto a rough mountain side and gone forever, and then Ernst put that airship down into the arctic and then-

And then Ernst wakes up.

And then he becomes a _superhero_ , because there's no War to fight but his country still needs him and Ernst has always been one for self-sacrifice.

And then he fights a maniac on a bridge, and then he realises that he isn't the only one who too stubborn to just _stay dead_.

And the universe _stops_.

)

* * *

 

Logically, Ernst knows that he would be dead without Ilse’s intervention, but he still can’t stop the bitter resentment that flows through him because they’ve lost Hanschen- The Winter Soldier- _Hanschen_ again. They’re in a stolen car, driving to New Jersey to find a super secret SHIELD base (because apparently SHIELD can’t have anything _not_ be a secret), and he asks,

“How will we find him again?”

Ilse looks at him like he’s crazy and, well, he might very well be. “You want to find the man that’s trying to kill you?” She squints, then her eyes widen with surprise and Ernst worries that maybe he’s just as transparent as he pretends to be before she says, “Oh, wonderboy, you want to put him down. Listen, that’s really noble but… He’s a _ghost_ for a reason. We’ll probably see him again, because you seem to be his target, but there’s no way we can hunt him down. You’ll just have to wait until he finds _us_ for another chance to break his neck with your bare hands, since you _refuse to use a gun_.”

Ernst chuckles nervously at the thought of shooting Hanschen or even putting another unkind hand on him. He- There’s a way to save Hanschen, Ernst is sure, because if Hanschen somehow survived with nearly no aging for _seventy-one years_ there has to be a reason that they’re both here in the _future_ , there has to be a way to get him back.

“Yeah. I guess we’ll just have to wait for him to find us.”

 

* * *

{

In the basement of a bank in DC, there is a lab. In that lab, there are scientists and a cryogenic chamber and The Winter Soldier.

The scientists tell The Winter Soldier that this is but a momentary failure and he will be sent back on his mission soon but instead of reacting with the normal blankness that they expect, The Winter Soldier blinks at them with an even more pronounced frown than usual and says, “Who was that?”

This wouldn’t be a weird thing to ask but The Winter Soldier _doesn’t talk_ ; he doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t argue, he doesn’t think. The Winter Soldier just is frozen and unfrozen and he feels pain and he kills and he fights and he causes the chaos that his master's demand and-

The Winter Soldier does not ask questions.

But he brushes his overlong blond hair out of his eyes (He can remember someone saying _“You always keep yourself so put together, except for that damn tilted hat”_ but his hair is messy and greasy and he’s never known anyone but the scientists and he’s never felt put together or whole and he even doesn’t _have_ a hat and he _doesn’t know where these memories are coming from_ ), he furrows his brow, he asks “Who was that?”

“He is your target,” One of the scientists says, eventually.

The Winter Soldier doesn’t respond and they continue with the briefing until he interrupts with, “But I knew him.”

“What?”  
“But, I-I knew him.” The Winter Soldier repeats, “He called me ‘Hanschen’, and he looked at me, and I _knew him_.”

And for a moment his eyes aren’t blank or angry or cold but warm and hurt and scared and _awake_ and, for just a moment, he is not The Winter Soldier but instead Hanschen Rilow, terrified and confused and missing his best friend, and then,

“ _Wipe him!_ ”

And then they shove him into a chair and push a mouthguard into his mouth and strap a device onto his head and The Winter Soldier _screams_

}

* * *

 

Two weeks ago, Ernst started meeting up with this guy to run--Or, well, it was a run for Georg, but more or a sort of quick walk for Ernst--and he seems trustworthy and he doesn’t like the government, so when Ilse says “We need somewhere to go and regroup”, he calls up Georg Zirschnitz.

Georg owns a house in DC and when he opens the door to their bruised bodies, he sighs and says, “Last time I give my address to a superhero,” but he still lets them in.

“Do you want a quick recap?” Ilse asks once they sit at Georg’s table and Georg has given up half his fridge to feed them, because she isn’t going to drag a civilian into this if they don’t want to be.

Georg nods with a shrug. “If I’m going to be housing fugitives, I might as well hear their side of the story and be swayed over to the dark side.”

It sounds bad, but then he winks at Ernst and Ernst relaxes a bit. Ilse recaps about the message from Sonnenstich, how SHIELD is actually HYDRA, how everything that Ernst worked for was in vain and- Ernst actually nearly feels better. He knows he’s not crazy now, knows why SHIELD went bad, knows that his bad feelings were right, and he’s alive to fix his mistake.

“So what do we about it?” Georg asks.

Ilse and Ernst exchange a look, and Ernst says “Well, we’re going to find the next highest agent and you’re going to-”  
“Sit here and let the two most wanted people in America try and kidnap a government official in _broad daylight_? No way.” Georg gets up and reaches into his bookshelf, pulling out two files. The second says _Project Falcon_. The first is Georg’s profile.

Ilse read through them and blinks, impressed, but she still looks skeptical. “You have some good specs but without the wings-”

“I know where they are. Sure, they have twelve armed guards and a 6 inch metal door guarding them but I’m sure that would be no problem for the two of you.”

Ernst looks at Ilse. She shrugs. “I’ve done harder things. And it would be useful to have the help of someone that the police isn’t actively hunting down.”

Georg and Ilse stare Ernst down until he shakes his head and sighs. Ernst may be horrible at knowing when to stay down, but he can tell when he’s been outvoted. “Fine! Let’s go steal a pair of wings.”

 

* * *

[

The world is freaking out.

See, the Manhattan Alien Crisis was crazy, but Captain America-- _Real life, history book Captain America!_ \--going AWOL and then getting taken down publically on a bridge after he’s apparently kidnapped and murdered a SHIELD agent? It’s unthinkable.

A mother takes her child’s action figures and his brand new shield and puts them in a box where he won’t find them. A teenager comes home from school and takes his autographed vintage Captain America poster down. An author moves the file for her novel, a nearly 300 page book on the Captain’s affect on modern pop culture, into her _Abandoned_ folder. A small boy, home sick and watching the news in his Cap PJs, cries.

They all watch as SHIELD denounces the Captain, watch as they strip Ernst Robel of his rank and tear his character to shreds, watch as they announce a new line of helicarriers-- _“To keep us safe from the threats that those like Ernst Robel pose,”_ They say.

They watch as the helicarriers go up into the air. They watch as the first one begins getting hit with explosions and fire. They watch as SHIELD’s new helicarriers fall.

And the world _spins_

]

* * *

 

The Winter Soldier is Hanschen, Ernst knows for sure now that he’s standing less than five feet away, chest heaving with exertion. All around them, there’s chaos. Somewhere nearby, something is on fire. The airship is falling apart around their ears, _Literally_ , Ernst thinks as a beam falls and lands nearly worryingly close to him. Hanschen glares at him, eyes not drawn away even by the near constant clattering of everything coming down.

“End this!” He says, growls, screams. Ernst’s dislocated his flesh and blood arm and Hanschen’s had a noticeable limp since they ran down here. The city passes under the glass beneath them.

Ilse’s voice rings in Ernst’s ear, _“What the_ hell _are you doing? He’s injured, just give him the mercy kill and-”_

Ernst pulls out the com--he’s never liked these things anyway, too weird and intimate--and crushes it between two fingers.

“Who _are_ you?” Hanschen asks, confused and upset, his face blotchy with an angry blush, his hair whipping around his face.

“It’s me, Hanschen,” Ernst says, and Hanschen physically recoils at the name, “It’s Ernst.”

Hanschen doesn’t verbally respond but he runs at Ernst, all the precision from his earlier attacks gone; Hanschen is lashing out like a hurt animal and Ernst-

Ernst is tired. He stopped fighting long ago, so long ago, when he put that plane in the arctic but the world wasn't ready for him to stop so he started right back up and now? Ernst Robel has lived enough for three normal lives, and he’s realized that a world without Hanschen--without his bright blue eyes sparkling with a smirk, without Ernst being able to turn to him and share a soft smile, without all of it--is not one that he wants to live in, not anymore. He realizes, as Hanschen’s metal arm lashes and lands a particularly devastating left hook, that this is _exactly_ the kind of self-sacrificing thing that his (possibly evil?) SHIELD therapist warned him about but, well. Ernst has never been one for picking up good habits.

“Fight _back_ ,” Hanschen hisses. Ernst shakes his head and even goes as far as to drop his shield. “What are you doing? Just _kill me already_.”

“No,” Ernst says, holding his arms out in obvious surrender, “I’m not going to fight. You’re my best guy, your name is Hans Wolfgang Rilow, and I’ve known you for longer than I can remember. I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“But you’re my _mission_ ,” Hanschen says, like it pains him. There’s something new in his eyes now, more than panic and anger and fight. “I have to complete my mission.”

“Then finish it. I won’t fight back, Hanschen. I’m with you,” He says, emphatically. Hanschen shakes his head violently, his mouth silently forming the word _no_ over and over again. “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

Hanschen’s head snaps up. His eyes are clear for once. He looks like he’s just woken up. “Er-”

And then the bottom of that helicarrier finally shatters and they both start to fall and Ernst looks up and sees a beam falling right on top of him and right before he blacks out, he thinks _Why the hell is it with me and airships?_

 

* * *

/

Ernst wakes up in a hospital bed. Ilse tells him that there’s going to be a trial, that there are armed guards outside of his room, that they found his body high on the shoreline and they don’t know who dragged him up there.

She talks to him for hours and, while she's removing the handcuffs on his wrist before she leaves, she says, "Go find your boy."

Ernst chest clenches up like he's still that little guy in Brooklyn, barely able to stand without swaying most days, unable to even take a full breath. _She knows_ , he thinks, but he says, "I don't know what you're-"

"The SHIELD files were leaked, Ernst. Or, well, I leaked them, completely on purpose, but. Everyone's read them by now and everyone knows what HYDRA did to The Winter Soldier, to Barnes. He was your best friend," She says, and Ernst can breathe again. 

"How am I supposed find him?" 

Ilse smirks at him as she finally clicks the cuffs off and stands. "Like I said, all of SHIELD's files were leaked. If you were a recently freed government assassin and you suddenly had the knowledge of every HYDRA base ever, where would you go?"

She hands Ernst her phone, the first of files already pulled up for him. Ernst has the list memorized and he's out the window before she's made it to the end of the hall.

It's not much but it's a start.

\

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it! Comment, kudos, hmu on [twitter](http://twitter.com/squidias) or [tumblr](http://liveinlivingcolor.tumblr.com)


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